To improve range, 802.11ad uses directional communication, the first step of which is to choose the best antenna configuration, or sector.
We studied the sector selection behaviorof Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) 802.11ad equipment in an experimental Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication scenario.
Analysis of the collected data revealed the following inefficiencies: (i) a large number of sector selection attempts thatdo not result in a sector change; and (ii) a ”ping-pong” effect in which a node oscillates between two sectors.
With this in mindwe studied an alternative antenna sector selection scheme that uses spatially-indexed historical performance data to pick the statistically-best sector for any given geolocation.
A trace-based analysis showed that such a strategy can potentially improve throughput by up to 60%, depending on location.